(301 words) Alexander Ivanovich Pokryshkin was born in a simple family in Novosibirsk. The future hero of the USSR showed independence in decisions and resourcefulness as a teenager: by the age of 20, without leaving his hobby for airplanes, Alexander had mastered several working specialties. And already in 1933 he graduated from an aviation school in Perm.
During the war years, the fighter pilot has come a long way from being promoted to senior lieutenant to an air marshal. He was a participant in such decisive battles of the Great Patriotic War as the battle for the Caucasus, the Lviv-Sandomierz operation, the Vistula-Oder operation and so on. After reading the memoirs of the pilot, we can say that A.I. Pokryshkin was a decisive, judicious and brave fighter. After each battle, he analyzed his actions, came up with new, more modern tactics of warfare. So, for example, after one of the many battles with a fascist plane at the beginning of the war, Alexander Pokryshkin came to the conclusion that it is worth using the tactics of “vertical battles”. Subsequently, this method of warfare has been used more than once in air battles. In 1943 there was a large victorious air battle over the Kuban, where A.I. was at the head of the air squadron. Pokryshkin. In this battle on AeroCobra aircraft, the pilot officially destroyed 24 enemy aircraft. In addition, like many other pilots, Alexander Ivanovich wrote down some of the downed planes in the account of the victories of his subordinates. Alexander believed that only a united army can win a war, and personal victories play a secondary role. Like most front-line soldiers, A.I. Pokryshkin was more afraid of being unsuitable for service due to injury than of dying, fighting for his homeland. Repeatedly in his memoirs he described the fear of being deprived of the opportunity to fulfill his duty to defend the Fatherland. For his exploits, the fighter pilot was awarded the title “Hero of the Soviet Union” three times.
After the war, A.I. Pokryshkin commanded several armies and continued to develop aviation in the USSR. He died in 1985 in Moscow. As stated by the pilot himself, it is difficult to find a pilot for whom a large number of downed planes was the main goal. During the Great Patriotic War, Soviet fighters had a common goal - everyone fought for their homeland and defended their families.
